My First Porn Flick

Although it was long ago, in the later part of 1976, I vividly remember the first time I went to a porn theatre with extreme clarity.

I grew up in a smallish town near Seattle, and the day I turned eighteen the local family movie theatre was coincidentally showing the "adult version" of Alice in Wonderland. Well, you can probably guess how I spent the evening of my eighteenth birthday. Now, you may never have seen the cinematic masterpiece that is Alice in Wonderland. It was made by porn pioneer Bill Osco, who also created the soft-core hit Flesh Gordon. Alice tells the Lewis Carroll story almost exactly, but with a lot of nudity and several sex scenes added. Two versions of this film were apparently released (and both have been posted on XHamster). I rewatched it a couple years ago, and although it was clearly the same movie, the version I jacked off to on XHamster was much more explicit than I remember seeing in the theatre all those years ago. What's shocking, of course, is the soft core version (or any version) was actually playing main stream neighborhood theatres, like the one I attended. Osco knew what he was doing however. Amazingly enough, Flesh Gordon and Alice in Wonderland grossed a combined $165 million worldwide.

I remember sitting at the back of the theatre where in the past I had gone to see Disney films, The Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure ... all the films I grew up with. There were very few other patrons in attendance, and so I sat in a row by myself. Two rows behind me were two young couples who had arrived together, having a great time. Since this was long before the advent of the internet, and hard-core porn was not very easy to find in those days, I was smitten enough with sex and thrilled enough to be seeing it on the big screen (no matter how tame it was) that whacking to it was a natural response. I just wasn't very subtle about it, unfortunately. I had my coat on the seat next to me and whenever screen sex seemed eminent, I looked around to see who was looking, acted as if I was very cold and put the coat over my lap. As the movie progressed I did this seven or eight times, each time there was a sex scene (or even just someone naked on the screen), and the four people behind me became increasingly amused. At one point they actually laughed as the coat went back on my lap. Ah well, live and learn.

While this taught me to be discrete jerking off in public, it also taught me I had the desire to see more adult movies, but I wanted those films to be as hard-core as possible from then on. At my first opportunity I made a trip to Seattle by myself. Sure I was eighteen but I was still living at home and had to come up with an excuse to give my mother for the trip. I don't remember what I told her, it may have been I wanted to see a matinee of the new Monty Python film, or maybe it was that I just wanted to hang out in downtown Seattle for an afternoon. It doesn't matter, I told her some lie, and off I went.

I had already meticulously checked out the porn theatre ads in the Seattle Times (remember back when main stream newspapers used to allow those ads?) and decided on the movie that was going to burst my hard-core cherry. It was titled The Joy of Letting Go, a straight porn flick (I only discovered gay porn movies later, but that's for another post ). That day in late 1976 finding the theatre was easy; the Midtown Theatre was somewhere in the Fourth and Pike area (the Midtown as long since closed and been torn down.) Once I found it, however, I didn't immediately go in. I had to make several passes back and forth before I worked up my courage. What if someone I knew saw me going in? (A near impossibility.) When I finally did bravely go up to the box-office, the ancient woman selling tickets almost wouldn't let me in. I looked younger than I was, a very new 18, and I didn't have a driver's license or ID with me at the time. Finally she accepted my voter registration card as proof of age. In the seventies that's all you needed, I guess.

Outside was a chilly but sunny afternoon, but inside the theatre was pitch dark and swelteringly hot. Of course, it had once been a glorious movie palace but those days were long over. It was very dark, very dirty, and more than a little scary. I saw many porn films at the Midtown in the subsequent years, but it always continued to seem kinda spooky. I passed through the lobby and then through the ratty once red curtains into the auditorium. I couldn't see a thing except the screen. The movie was already running and was in the middle of a lengthy dialogue scene. I groped my way to an empty seat. There weren't very many people in the audience that afternoon and they were spread out almost evenly among the many rows.

I watched the movie intently; it was, after all, my first hard-core porn film. Following the talky dialogue sequence there was a scene with a guy who had been k**napped by two women. The ladies tied him to a chair and had their way with him. It was the first hard-core porn scene I ever saw. I remember thinking, "Wow, there's a hard cock up there on the screen, and it's fucking some woman's pussy. Cool!" The next thing that passed through my head was, "I bet they don't show any cum, that's probably going too far." As you can guess, my next thought was, "Oh, fuck, there's the jizz! That's really cool!"

The other scenes that stuck out for me is a woman hiding in a closet watching a couple fuck, and a scene with a man shackled to a wall while his wife and another woman do it on the bed using a dildo with a little spinning fan on the end. The guy is so turned on that he blows his wad even though his hands are restrained above his head. After he shoots, his wife walks over to him and looks on the floor. There is a mat with measurements printed on it. He has squirted his load over two feet away from his cock, and his wife is very impressed. I thought these scenes and all of this film was stunningly hot and knew I wanted to see much, much more. (After years of searching I finally found an old VHS copy of The Joy of Letting Go about 15 years ago, and surprisingly it's still pretty hot. Maybe somewhat slow moving, but the sex scenes are original and passionate, and the plot remains erotic and sexy.)

I had learned my lesson at Alice in Wonderland and so I jacked-off very clandestinely that day. It took a few more trips to the Midtown to discover that it really wasn't necessary to be so circumspect there.

I was hooked for the rest of my life.